


slow dancing in a world on fire

by emeraldine



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Finale, Slow Burn, Slow Dancing, ish?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4855889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldine/pseuds/emeraldine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"matt thinks that if he were this close to her every night, hearing her heart beat in time with his, it wouldn’t be so hard to block out the cries from outside this room; this sanctuary, he thinks it could really be called."</p><p>after a particularly sleepless night, karen finds herself at work at 4:30 in the morning. only this morning, she's not alone.<br/>she and the devil of hell's kitchen share coffee, secrets and a dance, and over time, help each other heal. set post- season 1 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	slow dancing in a world on fire

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know when I became karedevil trash, but apparently it happened some time around monday morning. and two days later, here I am with a completed drabble, despite having several shield and agent carter documents sitting in my drive unfinished. whoops. anyway, hope you enjoy, and if you ever want to request drabbles, one-shots or fic ideas featuring certain pairings or tropes, feel free to comment on one of my published works or send me a message on leopclds.tumblr.com!
> 
>  
> 
> (((tfw u come back to read this almost a year later and your formatting hurts your eyes so you literally go through and fix it all up)))

Opening the door of Nelson & Murdock, Karen is surprised, and more than a little worried to learn that at 4:30 in the morning, it’s already unlocked.

There’s someone else here.

Karen takes off her heels, knowing they’ll give her away instantly - there’s literally no way to be quiet with heels on timber flooring - and hangs up her coat, making sure to carefully extract the .22 she apparently now carries from her pocket. She tiptoes around the corner slowly and silently to check Matt’s office and finds a man sitting in Matt’s chair, wearing a red suit- _the_ red suit. Despite her caution, her gun remains idly by her side. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen has protected her before; she figures the reason he now sits in her boss’s chair has something to do with the fact that he knows she’s still in danger.

His mask is still on, and the office and the city outside are still shrouded in darkness, but when he speaks, she doesn’t have to see him to know exactly who he is.

“When did you start carrying a gun?”

For all of a millisecond, she is shocked. Then, everything begins to make sense. The bruises, his fight with Foggy, his passion in trying to prove Fisk’s guilt; all of it.

“Matt.” It’s almost a relief to finally know; that is, until concern washes over with the force of a tidal wave. “When did you start dressing up and fighting crime?”

He chuckles. “That’s difficult to say.”

He takes off the mask now, and two things become very apparent to her. One: of course it’s him. She’d know that set jaw, those cheekbones and that smattering of stubble anywhere. And two: one of those cheekbones now displays a deep, dark scar that literally sends a sharp pang through Karen’s chest, right beside an older, yellowing bruise closer to his temple. She's always believed this man would be the death of her, but now she's all too aware of how quickly that could happen.

She moves over to his desk, clearing a space for herself to sit (something she’s imagined herself doing in rather different circumstances {she’s not proud, okay}), and gently takes Matt’s face in her hands. (She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t imagined that differently, too.)

“That’s the only one I haven’t patched up yet. It’s a little hard for me to.. Anyway, I knew it was you coming, and figured that even if you never wanted to speak to me again, you might at least help me with that? And I had to tell you at some point, anyway.”

She raises one eyebrow at him, leaning over him and reaching for the emergency kit.

“That’s why this thing is always running on empty”, she muses. "How did you know it was me coming?”

“Please. you’ve been in several hours early almost every day the past few weeks, and I could smell your perfume from a mile away. Give me a little credit.”

“Oh- is it too much?”

“Not at all. I just smell it more than anyone else can. The accident that took my sight.. my other senses are heightened, because of it." He stops, a small, barely-there smile on his face. "But I happen to think that scent suits you pretty perfectly.”

Karen looks away to hide her smile, then remembers he can’t see it. Regardless, it feels as though he doesn’t need to. He seems to be able to see everything without seeing anything.

“Can I ask a.. kinda strange question?”

She can feel Matt’s jaw lift in a small smile as she holds his face steady. “Of course.”

“What do you think I look like? You said once you give your friends faces, so to speak, and since then, I’ve been curious.”

“Well..”

His hand, which she somehow hadn’t even noticed resting on her shoulder, moves up to her neck, and one finger traces her jawline.

“You’re not particularly tall. Your face is on the smaller side, and you’re quite slender as well, I’d guess. Your steps are light. Your hair.. You have the softest hair of anyone I’ve ever met, I think." He casts his eyes down, emitting a barely audible chuckle as two fingers play with a section of hair. “It’s quite long, and I’d guess blonde. It must be blonde. I’ve been wondering about your eyes, though, ever since we met. I could never decide. They’ve gotta be either blue or green, or somewhere in the middle. My best guess is blue.”

“Is that your final answer?” She asks, and as his eyes meet hers it’s near impossible to believe he can’t see them.

“Blue. Pale blue, like the few clear skies and lakes I remember.” He nods decidedly, and the thought crosses her mind that if somehow he had been wrong, there’s no way she would’ve been able to tell him.

“Okay, I don’t know how you managed that, but you're literally spot on!" She laughs, rolling her eyes. "If you can see that well without even seeing you've probably noticed my eyebags too."

His expression becomes concerned then, and it occurs to her that she probably shouldn’t have brought up the subject of her sleepless nights. There’s no way she’s getting out of this one.

"Karen.."

Carefully wiping away the last remnants of blood, she quickly extracts herself from her position on his desk.

"All done! Coffee?"

Walking swiftly away into the "kitchen", she busies herself preparing two mugs, and plugs her phone into the new (well, new to her) speaker dock nearby.

"I always find it's way too quiet at this time of night. Or, well, morning. Whichever. So, I turn on some music and.. Get away." She sighs, almost inaudibly, and as a slow acoustic melody fills the room, Matt makes his way over to her, wincing slightly with every step his right foot takes.

"Two sugars, right?" She turns to find he's right behind her, and his pleading eyes stop her rambling.

"Karen, please. We need to talk about what's going on. I need to know why you're not sleeping, why you can't be in your own apartment for too long, and most importantly, why you carry a gun."

Karen exhales heavily. If anyone is to understand, she thinks it may be a vigilante and close friend. As for her hopes of anything more than friendship, though... Well, they'd been squashed down since she met him, they'd just have to handle being kept under the surface. For possibly the rest of forever. Understanding is something she could ask of Matt Murdock, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. But love? She's pretty sure she doesn't deserve that, or that it'll ever be available to her now.

"Okay, since you've let me in on your biggest secret... I'll tell you. But I need coffee first."

She finishes making each of their drinks, and the pair sit down at her desk. She takes a sip, exhales, sniffles and dips her head, and one tear hits the wooden table.

"I killed Fisk's right hand man."

The silence between her first sentence and her next blankets them, heavy and thick and suffocating.

"He, uh.. He kidnapped me, just clamped a cloth over my mouth and stole me from the street. I woke up in a room with nothing but a table and two chairs in it. I was in one of them, and he was in the other, staring me down from the other side of the table."

The thought occurs to her that she's relaying this story as if she was talking to lawyer-matt, giving him details as though this is just a case.

"We talked, he threatened me, then he offered me a job, and then he put his gun on the table, loaded, and then everything just kind of gets blurry and muddled at that point, but I remember being so, so scared that I just wasn't thinking straight, and then his phone rang and he was distracted, and I just-"

The tears flow freely now, and Matt stands, pulling her up with him and into his embrace. He's not entirely sure what to say; from a lawyer's point of view it doesn't look good, but she keeps talking anyway and momentarily, he doesn't have to.

"And I know that Fisk is locked up, and he can't do anything to me there so as long as I lay low I should be okay, but I think Fisk killed Ben Urich because he thought _he_  was the one that killed Wesley- or at least, because he wanted to expose Fisk, and if they find out I did it-"

"Hey."

Finally knowing there's something he can say with absolute certainty, he pulls away, resting one hand on her cheek and trying to meet her eyes. "That's not going to happen, okay? You know why that's not going to happen? Because you have a vigilante that cares so damn much about you and will never let you get hurt. Okay? I will _always_ keep you safe. _A_ _lways_."

He pulls her back in and for a while they just stand, holding each other closer than they ever have before. Slowly, surely, her sobs quieten and her breathing evens out, and all the while, as stillness stretches out between them, he holds her.

In the newfound calm, they can now hear the music that had been completely forgotten. As the infamous melody comes in, he pulls away with a quiet laugh, bowing and holding out a hand to her.

"Shall we?"

With a surprised smile, she takes Matt’s hand, but their “dance” is really little more than swaying slowly together, so close they move as one body. Matt sings along, almost inaudibly.

“I didn’t know you were a singer. Or a John Mayer fan, for that matter.”

He laughs. “Well, I’m not either, really. This song’s just a classic; couldn’t help but fall in love with it. Although to be honest, right now, it feels to me like this room is the only thing that’s not about to burn down to the ground.”

Karen finds herself thinking that of all the things she could have been spending this time doing, of all the purposes this room could serve, this is easily the best.

“Promise me something?”

"What?”

“I’m.. Okay with what you’re doing. To an extent. But I’d rather you stayed alive a little longer. And I know the cops can be complete idiots at times, but the people of Hell’s Kitchen are not your responsibility. They’re for the police to take care of. Taking down guys like Fisk, I can completely support. You want to make a difference and I totally love that about you. But the small crime? Police can handle that. And I can handle you not getting killed because you’re out every single night picking fights with every mugger you see.”

“You’re asking me to ignore everything I hear?”

“No. Not everything. There are definitely things that can be better dealt with by you than by a few cops and potentially a jury. An abusive relationship, for example? If you want to swoop in, save the girl and.. persuade her husband to leave Hell’s Kitchen, I can absolutely get behind that, because I know domestic violence cases can get so caught up in politics sometimes. But gas station robberies and alleyway fights..” Karen trails off, unsure about how to express herself without offending Matt.

With a shrug, she looks up at him to gauge his reaction.

“Alright”, he replies, after a long pause. “If you promise me something.”

“Anything.”

Matt thinks that if he were this close to her every night, hearing her heart beat in time with his, it wouldn’t be so hard to block out the cries from outside this room; this sanctuary, he thinks it could really be called.

“This, right here, becomes a regular thing. I don’t want you spending your sleepless nights alone, and God knows I could use the company. So, next time you find yourself up at 3, 4am, call me, and we’ll meet here. And during that time, we’ll do, say, eat or drink whatever we need to be okay. Dancing, coffee, vodka.. no, scratch that last one. We’re gonna need to be able to work the next morning. Anyway, from now on, we medicate here. And then.. hopefully, things get better.” He finishes with a shrug and meets her eyes. “What do you say?”

Karen leans back into him, head in the crook of his neck, and smiles against his shoulder. “I’d like that.”

For the rest of that night, and most nights onward, this becomes their place. They talk, they slow dance, they eat, they sleep, and one night, they even kiss. He twirls her around the room and dips her low and as they come back up, their lips meet as if an unspoken necessity, like it's the next move in the dance they don’t even have to think about.

Kisses become a regular thing, too, after that. And eventually, they realise, they’re coming here even on the good nights, because most nights are good nights. Because they really are healing. So when Matt finally, fearfully asks if he can publicly, officially be in love with her, and if these night time activities can happen in the daytime, and they can go out for ice cream and movies and kiss in public and have something normal and sacred and real, she rises on her toes to kiss him in the middle of the street.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> look son, I'm still mad about everything season 2 gave us regarding these two. their romance was.. eh, and she found out his identity far, far too late to be fair. but this is still a thing I love, so I'll just pretend it's canon.


End file.
